I have written all the time about spring build up and you write about wintering with same heating values.

Bluebee, what is your experience about the issue. It seems that you have not at all

I’ve only applied electric heat to SOME of my bees over 3 different winters. As I’ve tried to report many times, my primary wintering method is insulation; not electric. However it sounds like I have seen more in my 3 years with electric heat than some have seen in 10 years. :laugh:

My goal is not to winter my bees with electric heat. As I’ve said, I’m not even experimenting with electric heat this winter at all (kinda busy with other things). In the future, if I expand my nuc operations my plans would be to add some insurance to such a business. Most good business guys/gals like to maximize yields, right? It’s the bitter cold spells that take out nuc sized colonies of bees. If those spells can be moderated with electric heat, I think your yields go up with very little cost. I would probably program my controllers to turn on when the outside temp dips down below 10F, or -12C.

15watts of electrical heat is VERY economical. Say my winter insurance plan consists of 15watts x maybe 10 hours a day x maybe 6 weeks of bitter cold = 6300 watt-hours for winter insurance. Electric sells for 12 cents per kilowatt-hour here. So my winter insurance plan for nucs would cost me about 75 cents. A live spring nuc is worth how much? About $100. A dead spring nuc is worth about how much? I think even Moots would agree that is a good insurance plan!

Let’s not lose sight of the original poster! He was looking for advice on how to winter some bees with electric; not heating them in the spring.

I just want to thank all the posters in this thread. It has been informative and entertaining. Such passion over a concept that appears to really quite simple. Cutting through all the fluff, which is the entertainment portion, I walk away with this data:

1. Winter heating of a robust colony, with ample stores, is not needed. Even in the coldest parts of the beekeeping world.

2. If you live in such areas the best way to reduce winter stress is to use well insulated hives.

3. Air flow, ventilation, through the winter is critical to colony survival because it prevents/reduces condensation and keeps the cluster dry.

4. If you want experiment with or nurture a very small colony through the coldest parts of an extreme northern winter with temps running consistently below 0 degF you need only to add enough power, watts, to maintain the air temperature around the cluster at 45 to 50 degF. However, this is just an experiment. The best practice is to have the conditions stated in the first three points.

5. Heating a hive, in a far northern climate, serves it's greatest purpose to stimulate brood rearing in the spring. This basically jump starts the colony in preparation for the short northern nectar flow season. Timing this manipulation is important and weather changes can get you in trouble.

6. Looks like the best option for additional heat would be the heat strips used to prevent pipes from freezing because they have a built in regulator. Without some control device the other methods are an all or nothing system.

Was I understanding this right? Did I miss something? Oh yeah, BlueBee is a democrat. :-D Moots doesn't like democrats. :-D Finski feels like he is waisting his time. :-x

Go ahead and beat me up if I missed something. Where I live most of it doesn't really apply but it still makes for a good read. Thanks again.

6. Looks like the best option for additional heat would be the heat strips used to prevent pipes from freezing because they have a built in regulator. Without some control device the other methods are an all or nothing system.

OH MY GOODNESSSSSSSS

So say a guy who has not a smallest experience about heating.

Why guys try to be smarter than they are?

Self made electrict control system in moist environment! ...They really are not needed.

- 15W- winter- under cluster- all are totally wrong

Where hell you need control system, when whole system has wrong setup?

Thanks for the correction Finski. As I stated in my post I was trying to recount what I took away from all the other previous information. Your correct, I don't have any experience but I wasn't posting as if I did.

Something like that is what I plan on buying. Turns on at 38 degrees. I'm all for "winter rest" but I don't believe temps down to -30 are good for bees. They can still still keep their cluster but they won't get the stress of frigid temps.

Yep, that’s the stuff. There is a bulge in the cord near the power connection; that is where the thermostat electronics are located. You want to make sure the bulge is inside the hive and not outside. I would probably try to stuff the entire thing inside your bottom board (or heater box) if you could for electrical safety. The connection between your extension cord and the heater cable would likely remain drier inside the hive as long as you have a top vent; but that is another topic!

At least power the thing from a GFCI protected circuit as required by code in wet locations or garages. There's virtually no inductance or capacitance in those heater cords so they're not going to falsely trip GFCIs.

.When I started spring heating in the half April 2003, I saw quite quickly how it works.

Later I could see that in big hives' heating + pollen patty feeding gov 3-fold amount of brood compared to natural build up. The basic is the sphere volume formula, why it happens. Heating teaches the meaning of heat to the hive build up.

With heat I may keep alive 1 or 2 frame nucs over winter, but they are not able to make brood in spring. So I must take new bees from big hives and that is not good at all.

Heating does not help small colonies, and neither patty feeding. Only good method is to take emerging brood from bigger hives and kick up the nuc this way.

These are my results from issue in a nut shell.

I do not comment any more this issue. I am really tired to stupid wheel inventing and spamming in this forum.

I got 200 lbs honey per hive this summer. I hope Bluebee that you got 600 lbs because you are so quickly to learn everything.

One other thing to be wary of with electric power cords is rodents and rabbits love to chew on them; especially the orange colored ones. Make sure the mice can't get into your nucs around the cables. Keep an eye out for rabbits and bee keepers ;)

I have said 15 times that I do not over winter hive with electrict. I use heaters in April and May.

What you need is

1) more experience in basic beekeeping2) skill to read, and especially understand what others write.3) get some beekeeping books and learn basics of beekeeping.4) check medication5) learn to make difference with SPRING and WINTER

Quote

One other thing to be wary of with electric power cords is rodents and rabbits love to chew on them; especially the orange colored ones. Make sure the mice can't get into your nucs around the cables. Keep an eye out for rabbits and bee keepers ;)

Rabit advice is really good. Problem is that we have not rabbits.

.To mice I feed poison, not heating cables.

.Yes, I keep eye on beekeepers if they are woman. One is and she is 68 y old.

.Your desire to spam everything has enormous dimensions.What you can do is go to USA Got Talent TV program to show your stand up comics skills

Wow! This was an impressive thread to read. I have to say that I have learned something, adding heat to the cluster in the spring to help with the build up. Now I have to share what I know from my father.

My father read an article written by a researcher during the communist regime, when beekeeping was strongly encouraged in my country (Romania), about the benefits of heating the hives during winter. The researcher used regular foundation wire zigzagged on a bottom board, totaling 10W at 12V, painted (because he used galvanized wire, and it still rusts). He also used a microcontroller with a temperature sensor placed in the middle of the hive towards the back, outside of the cluster (middle on the vertical and lateral, towards the back longitudinal). The microcontroller will turn on the heater by a relay, only when the temperature was below +6C. This prevented too much activity from the bees and less food used to keep warm in too cold days or nights. Basically, he tried to emulate the conditions of an indoor wintering, when the bees stay at a constant temperature. The researcher weighed the hives before and after, he set up different temperatures in different hives, no heater in others, did all sorts of variations to see what works best. So it wasn't just guess work, it was research, and he published the results. So, my father built similar heaters, used a thermostat, and he wintered hives that would have died otherwise. He had no winter mortality for many years until the varroa became a big problem (got resistant to the treatments). He also reduces the space inside the hive to the frames the bees completely cover, so they have less space to heat up, he uses only one entrance, situated at 2/3 from the bottom (a bit higher than the Hoffman line) and he heavily insulates the inner cover to eliminate condensation.

So I have decided this winter to experiment a bit with his setup and add a little more to it, since technology has advanced since that research was done. I have ordered parts for 5 bottom heaters: 5 temperature sensors, 5 relay boards (unfortunately the relay boards were returned to sender by customs - stupid bleep happens in Canada). I have plenty of Arduino compatible microcontrollers, since my other hobby is robotics. I have also bought 4 humidity/temperature sensors and another one that works to lower temperatures (to keep track of the outside values). I want to use these last sensors placed on top of the hive, in the hole I have in the inner cover, below the insulation, to measure the amount of the humidity and temperature variance in the hives with different entrances. All the data will be logged by date and hour into a micro SD card by the microcontroller so I can read it later and plot a graph and see what setup works best for my location. I don't have all the parts yet to actually place the setup in the hives yet, but I will probably start with the humidity sensors and add the heaters later when the temp sensors and the relay modules will come in. I will take pictures and post the data collected, so there is no guess involved. I will also weigh the hives at the time I will start the experiment and weigh them again at the end, to see the food consumption. If you have suggestions of what I should also record, or other things I should try, please let me know. I may be able to add them to the experiment. Thanks.